Billionaire Mikhelson Becomes Russia’s Second-Richest Man

Leonid Mikhelson, the billionaire who controls OAO Novatek, Russia’s largest private gas producer, is poised to bump Alisher Usmanov from his perch as the country’s richest person.

Mikhelson has been closing the net-worth gap with Usmanov in the past three months, and is now $400 million behind the mining magnate, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The former engineer, who has a net worth of $16.8 billion, became the country’s second-richest man after buying a majority stake in a Russian chemical company for a fraction of its current value.